Corsair Neutron NX500 800GB review: new NVMe from the USA

Corsair is trying to compete with the Samsung 960 Pro

By Tomas HochstenbachThursday 10 August 2017 14:00

Conclusion

The Corsair Neutron NX500 sort of struggles with the ‘SandForce-effect’: the performance achieved in the synthetic benchmarks is impressive, but in practice there is not a whole lot left of it. The similarities in used components and benchmark scores indicate that the Neutron NX500 is little else than a Force MP500 with a PCI-Express card, although the steady-state tests show that Corsair changed things here and there. To be completely honest, we were expecting more after half a year of development.

However, the price of this new Corsair SSD is that of a high-end product and it is even more expensive than the Samsung 960 Pro, which is a lot faster in practically every test. Even when we take the price of a separate PCIe-card and heatsink into consideration, we cannot justify the added price on the basis of the benchmarks.

All in all this conclusion comes down to the same finding as before: nobody can compete with Samsung when it comes to the high-end SSD market. Intel stands a small chance using the controllers borrowed from the server world, but every manufacturer that relies on third parties cannot achieve the same performance level. It looks elegant and the heatsink takes away all worries when it comes to heat levels, we will give Corsair that. That said, for this product to become an interesting purchase the Neutron NX500 will have to go down in price substantially.